“If you're looking for a mobster you haven't seen in a while, you can find him in one of three places: in jail, in the morgue, or in St. Paul.”
Nate Granzow has long been one of my closest friends. He’s also a hell of a salesman: we met when he cold-called me via a Goodreads request to read his first novel, The Scorpion's Nest. It didn’t sound like my cup of tea out the gate—I have a very one-track mind in that I’m either reading others in my genre or I’m reading non-fiction to better my own craft—but he convinced me to give it a read.
That novel happened to be the first of many fantastic works written by Granzow. Whether following a everyman journalist powered by moxie, a motley crew exploring supernatural horrors given life, or smart-aleck archeological fortune hunters, Granzow has always had a talent for telling compelling, fast-paced stories. He’s also displayed a knack for humor, as is the case with a pair of black comedy novels he wrote (again, displaying his sales skills; prior to those books, I wasn’t convinced prose was an effective medium for humor).
Well, Granzow’s back.
This time, he’s brought us a hardboiled historical crime thriller.
Black Cordite, White Snow is set after the Great War (that’s World War I for those unaware of the history) in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Niklas and Kessler Kristofferson are Danish by birth, American by naturalization, and veterans of the conflict in France. In the age of Prohibition and the rise of American organized crime as we know it, they see an opportunity to break free of tedious, underpaid labor on another’s behalf and establish freedom, security, and a higher standard of living for themselves and their loved ones.
How do they propose to do that?
As John Wick would say…
First of all, I appreciate the world building that went into this. For a good thriller that’s set in our world, world building consists of a ton of research. When that thriller goes historical, the research gets harder and more copious the farther you drift from the modern day.
Even if I hadn’t read Nate’s Substack to see the lengths he went to research and recreate 1920s Saint Paul on the page, it would be readily apparent. The results speak for themselves. He paints a picture of a frostbitten and hardboiled town where good guys are far and few between, where beneath the veneer of post-war optimism lurks heinous and hyperviolent criminals. The noir checklist is marked off in rapid order, and in a setting outside of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago to boot.
The characters are compelling (with my favorite being Oscar Hole-in-the-Day, an Ojibwe tribesman and friend to the Kristoffersons), the dialogue bears the Granzow signature snappiness, and the action is crisp. Out the gate, there’s enough to Black Cordite, White Snow that it’s damn-near guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser to fans of thrillers, especially crime thrillers.
What I like the most? I honestly like he didn’t whitewash things.
It’s about a three-way shot with historical fiction. Some folks will look at the past through rose-colored lenses and gloss over the ugliness. Others will focus solely on what was ugly and wrong. A third will present things as they were, for better or worse, and use the time period as a canvas to depict a story. I definitely prefer the second approach to the first, but I find that unless that ugliness is central to the story (or it is a non-fiction book), the third approach seems best.
Granzow takes the third approach. He doesn’t shy away from accurately portraying the unsavory attitudes of the day (societal attitudes towards blacks, indigenous people, women, LGBT+ folks, and even other European demographics). There’s certainly the black market and general government corruption that both Prohibition and low pay/training standards for law enforcement created. All of these are put on display and played straight.
To me, this is big. It’s fine to admire the aesthetics, music, and culture of the past. Not only is it fine to look to the past to learn from it, it is highly encouraged. Too many people forget that there was a whole lot of ugliness to it. Granzow doesn’t forget, and he doesn’t let the reader forget, either.
From a writer’s perspective, it also adds to the immersion. If I hopped in a time machine and traveled to the past in the US and Europe, I would expect to be treated much worse. In that aspect, even parts that made me blink and side-eye particular characters were a testament to Granzow’s writing skill.
But, all of that is an aside. At the end of the day, Black Cordite, White Snow is not only an excellent hardboiled crime thriller of its own volition, it is also an effective cornerstone to a future series. The closing chapters make it readily apparent we have not seen the last of the Kristofferson brothers or the remainder of the characters that survived to the final page.
Do yourself a favor and pick up your copy today!
What an incredible write-up, my friend. Thank you! I'm deeply flattered. :)